Project Overview

The founder of Internship-On-Demand (IOD), would like to better understand how their student facing website could be improved for organization and usability. Based on our findings, there were two elements that stood out:

  1. Students were unable to clearly articulate where or how the site tracked their progress despite there being 5 indicators on the site.

  2. Students were unsure how to edit and make their portfolio public.

    The recommendations provided in this report will enhance the visibility of a student’s progress in the course and improve the usability of editing their portfolio.

The Client

Internship-On-Demand (IOD), is an organization that offers “pre-internships”. Pre-interns will learn new skills, gain a deep understanding of a company, and improve their odds of finding their next professional experience at IOD. Overall, this organization aims to close the skills and sourcing gap for college students and employers to have successful internship experiences respectively.

Client Goals

  • The sidebar feels “messy” at times and could use more organization.

  • The key user tasks could be improved for ease of use.

Project Goal

Provide IOD with an interactive prototype that improveS the LAyout organization and usability of their website.

the site appeared to have a few minor usability concerns

The client provided a video walkthrough of the IOD website. I transferred my observations in to the form of a cognitive walkthrough. I noted what was possibly working well and what could be improved:

Working well:

  • Viewing video lessons

  • Downloading lesson materials

  • Editing portfolio

  • Course home

Improve:

  • Accessing the Home page after logging in

  • Manually marking assignments as complete

  • Highlighting, copying, and pasting Google meet links to join a meeting

THROUGH THE USERS’ EYES

I wanted to see through the lens of the primary users, the Pre-Intern students, in order to understand how IOD fit within the user’s life. I chose to conduct a contextual inquiry and finalized a script based on what I wanted to learn about the Pre-Intern experience, how the IOD website helps and to gage the temperature of the pain points I observed in the client’s walkthrough. 

Select image to navigate to view contextual inquiry script

The portfolio was an area of confusion for the pre-interns.

“I sometimes forget to mark my assignment complete even after I uploaded my documents already. Then I have to go back and look at each assignment module to see what I missed. I know other teammates had to do that too.”

- Participant 1

Despite both users having no trouble submitting and marking their assignments completed, they both expressed frustration about their experience with the manual process of having to mark the assignment complete after already submitting the necessary documents.

Both users new how to add projects on their portfolio, but did not know how to make the information public or if it was possible. This was one glaring obstacle that surfaced in the contextual inquiry that I would not have known from through the client’s walkthrough of the site.

Contextual Inquiry Guiding Questions:

  1. How many hours a day do you spend on this website?

  2. What does a typical day look like?

  3. What features do you use the most?

  4. What does/doesn’t work well?

Pre-Interns want to easily see their progress, but the current tracking indicators did not meet their expectations.

Hearing their frustration, I dug deeper and asked how they knew if an assignment is missing.

“I just end up double checking every time I submit…I don’t think there is a way to track your progress.”

- Participant 2

“I knew because when I finished my last assignment of the program, I noticed that the circle tracker on the home page wasn’t at 100%.”

- Participant 1

Improving the user’s flow

Being able to feel what the users experienced, I wanted to improve the portfolio and assignment tracking progress pain points.

Assignment tracking progress because…

  • Part of a larger interaction that impacted the user’s everyday experience.

Portfolio because…

  • The client noted this as a critical tool for Pre-Interns to showcase their work to prospective employers connected with Internship-On-Demand.

For these reasons, I felt that this would give the biggest lift to the primary user’s overall experience and meet the client’s goals.

turning sketches to life

I began sketching wireframes once I had a good idea of where the improvements aligned in the user flow and the interactions laid out.

Experience the Interactive Prototype for Yourself

For more work inquiries or to chat over boba tea feel free reach out to me via email!

Thank you for reading.